Forbidden - Karla Sorensen Page 0,55
I handed them to him, setting them on the counter with a skeptical look. “Mom’s gonna be pissed if you poison me with your cooking before they get home.”
“Nah, she’ll forgive me.”
Emmett grinned.
This poor kid. He had no choice but to speak fluent sarcasm considering the family he was born into.
A minute later, the kitchen counter was covered in an array of things that should’ve equaled out to a pretty epic breakfast.
“Don’t they have like, fancy cooking gadgets that make this stuff easy?”
His eyes lit up. “They have one of those air fryer things. And a toaster.”
I pinched the bridge of my nose. “I know what a toaster is, Emmett.”
“Are you sure we can’t just go out to breakfast?”
“Tomorrow,” I insisted. “It’ll be our reward for not killing each other after all this unsupervised time together.”
“If your breakfast doesn’t kill me first,” he muttered.
I shoved him sideways. “Get out of here with that bad attitude.”
Emmett sighed. “Just don’t use the microwave and toaster at the same time. Mom said a really bad word yesterday when she did that.”
Rolling my eyes, I said “I know how to work appliances, Emmett. Go watch those awful cartoons.”
After anchoring my hair in a bun at the top of my head, I mentally rolled up my sleeves and got to work. I managed to crack some eggs in a sizzling skillet, with only a few chunks of the shell that I scooped out. Bread went into the toaster, and I jammed the button down.
Pulling a bag of sausage links up closer to my face, I tried to read the reheating directions. The eggs took up the whole skillet, so I ripped a piece of paper towel off the roll and stuck a few links into the microwave.
For a moment, I eyed the two appliances. I’d never heard Paige complain about running them simultaneously, and even though I hadn’t lived under their roof for four years, I would’ve remembered if it was an issue.
With a shrug, I pressed the start button on the microwave.
The whole kitchen went dark.
“Shit sticks,” I whispered.
“Told you that would happen!” he yelled from the couch.
With my hands on my hips, I let out a deep sigh. “It’ll be fine. I can just go flip the fuse. Can you yell when the lights go back on?”
“As long as you didn’t blow the fuse,” he said, sounding so much like Logan I almost rolled my eyes. “Dad said if Mom did that one more time, he was going to let her change it herself.”
I smiled. “And what did she say to that?”
“That he could shove his fuse up his ass because she’d be just fine if she had to.”
I was still laughing when I walked down the hallway and opened the utility closet. But when I opened the gray metal door, my laughter died a horrible death.
Note to self: listen to the ten-year-old when he tells you not to run the appliances at the same time.
Emmett eyed me when I came back to the family room. “What’s wrong?”
“Fuse is blown.”
“Are you going to call someone to come fix it?”
My thumb tapped furiously on my thigh as I thought about my options. “I may not have to.”
I yanked out my phone and sent a text.
Me: You at the gym yet?
* * *
Kelly: Probably not for another hour, why?
* * *
Me: Nothing. Just trying to remember if I had a box of fuses in my office. Remember when Amy was having all those issues last year?
* * *
Kelly: Someone blew the fuse on the stereo in the middle of a Sunday afternoon class. YEAH, I REMEMBER. You ever tried to teach with only sound of your heavy breathing to motivate people?
* * *
Me: Thankfully, no.
With a glance at the dark kitchen, I decided that the very last thing I felt like doing was to wait around all day for an electrician. I went to find Emmett.
“If you don’t mind a road trip to the gym, we actually have some spare fuses in my office. There’s no point in paying someone to do this if I can figure it out myself.”
“Yeah, except if you blow the house up because you put the wrong fuse in.”
“Do you have that little faith in me?” I asked.
“You don’t know how to scramble eggs without burning them, Iz.” Emmett gave me a wide-eyed duh look.
I motioned to the front door. “Let’s go, punk. I’ll buy you breakfast on the way.”
Twenty minutes later, he was still inhaling the rest of his